“Brian confessed to the crime because…”
“Because why?”
“Because he thought he was covering for me.”
Jack’s pulse quickened. “Was he?”
She drew a breath and turned away
Jack said, “Was Brian covering for his mother, Lindsey?”
She still didn’t answer, wouldn’t look at him.
Jack’s voice took on an edge. “I want the truth this time, damnit. No more lies. You tell me the truth, and maybe I can work something out with Torres. You keep on lying, I guarantee you’ll die by lethal injection.”
She turned and faced him, her eyes glistening with tears. “Brian didn’t kill Oscar. But neither did I.”
“Then what did happen?”
She drew a breath, collecting herself. “Most of what you heard about Oscar was true. He was an awful man, awful to me, awful to Brian. We fought a lot, and Brian was the one who suffered. The thing with the headphones and Brian’s loss of hearing-that’s all true.”
“Is that where the truth ends? Everything else you told the jury was a lie?”
“No. Not by a long shot. The sex. Oscar and Johnson and me. I was telling the truth about that, too. He gave me a club drug or something. That’s how it all got started.”
“It wasn’t something you wanted to do?”
“No. Not at all.” She paused, then added, “Not at first.”
Jack nearly had to shake his head, make sure he’d heard that right. “What do you mean, ‘not at first’?”
She was suddenly less misty, more defensive. “What do you think it means, Jack? It means I didn’t like it at first, but my feelings changed over time.”
“So what are you saying? You were abused and fell into some low self-esteem psychological-”
“I’m not making any bullshit Stockholm syndrome excuses, Jack. My feelings never changed about the three- way stuff. My feelings toward Damont-that’s what changed.”
“You liked having sex with him?”
“It went beyond that. I liked him.”
“How did Oscar feel about that?”
“Ask the fertility doctor, the government’s expert. He told the jury all about Oscar’s assassin sperm count, his jealousy over my infidelity. What the doctor didn’t realize was that Oscar wasn’t jealous in the normal sense. He just didn’t like it that Damont and I started to do it on our own terms.”
“It was something Oscar could no longer control. Was that it?”
She shook her head and chuckled, but it was mirthless. “The only time Oscar was ever happy was when he had everything and everybody under control. He got his rocks off watching Damont and me go at it. He scored points with his daddy by getting all Coast Guard routing information from Damont and feeding it to Brothers for Freedom. And I was the pornographic quid pro quo he used to pay back his buddy Damont for all that secret information.”
“And then things fell apart,” said Jack.
“Of course. But Damont is the one who came up with the solution, not me.”
“You two had a plan?”
She nodded slowly. “I went to work at the hospital that morning, and I called Damont, just like he told the jury I did. But I wasn’t trying to lure him over to the house and set him up for a murder that had already gone down. It was all just part of the plan. I told him, ‘Go on over, Damont. Door’s unlocked. Brian’s asleep for another forty-five minutes. Oscar’s asleep in the bedroom. Do what you gotta do.’ ”
Jack felt numb for a second. “So Johnson went?”
“Yeah. Just like that Cuban soldier said he did.”
“Then what?”
“He went straight to the bedroom. He found Oscar’s gun right where I told him it would be. And then…”
“He shot him?”
She seemed to struggle, then said, “Yeah. He shot him.”
Jack paused. He wasn’t sure why. It just seemed like the fitting thing to do upon the mention of someone’s untimely death. “But wait a minute,” said Jack. “At some point he talked to Brian, right?”
“Right. That was when things started to go wrong. See, Damont and I didn’t think Brian would hear the gunshot. But something woke him. The vibration of footsteps on the wood floor, maybe a light going on. Whatever it was-Brian sensed that something was happening.”
“But if Brian got up and he saw Johnson standing over Oscar’s body, he would have known that Johnson shot him, right?”
“Except that he didn’t see Johnson. Damont heard Brian’s bedroom door open before Brian stepped into the hallway. Damont hid in the closet. All Brian saw when he came in the bedroom was Oscar all bloody and lying on the bed.”
“Is that when Brian called you at work?”
“Yes. And then he went back in his room, too scared to come out until I got there.”
“What did Johnson do?”
“When he heard Brian’s door close, he came out of the closet and ran out of the house. But then, this is where he finally got clever. He waited a minute or two, then walked back in the house and went straight to Brian’s room. He was acting all excited, told Brian that I had called him and asked him to come over, that something had happened to Oscar. Poor Brian, he just freaked. He didn’t know what to do. He got all flustered and figured that I had shot Oscar. He knew how much Oscar and I had been fighting; he knew how abusive Oscar was. He knew if I’d done it, that Oscar had deserved it.”
“So Brian told Johnson-”
“Right,” said Lindsey. “Brian said he had done it. I guess he figured a ten-year-old boy wouldn’t go to jail. But his mommy would. He thought he was protecting me.” She was leaning against the wall, as if exhausted, her eyes cast downward. “That’s the truth, Jack. That’s the way it really happened. Damont and I weren’t sure which one of us might eventually get charged. But we agreed up front, if either of us was, we wouldn’t point the finger at the other. If push came to shove…”
“You’d blame it on Brian.”
She folded her arms tightly, withdrawing a bit, as if Jack had hit below the belt by saying it aloud.
Jack said, “That was all just a dance that you and Johnson did in the courtroom. His accusing Brian, your breaking down and saying it was all a lie. Nice touch, Lindsey. All the more believable if the mother stands up and defends her son.”
“I’m not proud of that,” she said.
Jack looked off to the middle distance. He could have gone through the entire alphabet, A to Z, listing the things she shouldn’t have been proud of. But he wasn’t here to lecture. He was here to keep her off death row. “What brought it all to a head, anyway?” said Jack. “How did Johnson finally decide that it was time for Oscar to go?”
She seemed relieved to have another question, anything to release her from the painful silence of self- reflection. She forced a little smile and said, “Ah, now that’s where the story gets very Miami.”
56
Jack went straight from the prison to Theo’s apartment. His friend was just about ready to head down to Sparky’s Tavern to set up for the lunch crowd when Jack caught up with him. Theo sat on a bar stool at the kitchen counter and listened for almost ten minutes without interruption-a record for him-as Jack recounted his entire conversation with Lindsey. Since Theo was his investigator, Jack didn’t have to worry about breaching any privileges. More important, he was able to give his friend complete vindication on his theory about who torched Jack’s Mustang.
“Johnson was definitely in with druggies,” said Jack.
